Rishi,
Please read this one. Internet boxes are going to be cheaper than PCs and manufacturers plan to send them to the consumers.
Steve
*************
The miracle box
By Jim Davis
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
November 17, 1998, 10:45 a.m. PT
special report The future of a world where television and the Internet become fully
integrated rests upon the once-humble, no-frills cable TV set-top box.
Formerly relegated to just switching channels, it will be endowed with the potential to
control an entire network of devices in the home ranging from PCs to VCRs, as well as
serve as a communications device for phone and videoconferencing service.
"As we move forward, we're going to see less and less distinction between a set-top box
and a PC," noted Bill Wal, chief scientist and technical director for Scientific-Atlanta, which
manufactures many of the cable set-top boxes in use today. "There are a number of PC
manufacturers looking towards low-end PCs that are TV-centric, but we see a blurring of
those distinctions."
It is significant that much of this blurring is taking place within a device oriented toward
television, not the personal computer. Only a few years ago,
many computer companies were hoping to expand their
businesses by incorporating TV features within their devices, not
the other way around.
As many had predicted, however, the mass consumer market is
far more aware of television-based technologies than PCs and
other Internet devices, according to research by International Data
Corporation. People are apparently willing to expand their surfing
from TV channels to the Web, but they don't want to move from
the living-room couch to the den to do it.
The trend is most evident in plans by cable companies to offer advanced digital services
such as email, telephony, Web access, digital television, and video on demand. Already
cable companies are seeing that set-top boxes are a hotly contested battleground for the
deployment of powerful software and chips once formerly reserved for personal computers.
"The set-top box is an interesting product to [cable operators]," said Steve Guggenheimer,
product manager for Microsoft's digital television group. "They are the gateway to the rest of
the world and other potential forms of revenue for them."
Microsoft has invested in the last two years about $1 billion in cable operator Comcast,
purchased Internet set-top device company WebTV, and partnered with numerous
consumer electronics companies such as Sony, Sega, and Thomson Electronics--which
owns the RCA brand name--to ensure that its operating system software has a toehold in
the emerging information appliance market.
What the set-tops will do and what they will look
like are still topics of hot debate among the cable
operators, who are deciding what balance of
features users are most likely to use against the
cost of including those features in next-generation
designs.
At the very least, industry executives with cable
companies, cable equipment manufacturers, and
high-tech companies all agree that the devices
will become increasingly sophisticated over the
next five or six years. What follows is a
distillation of their expectations for what new
technologies will appear in set-top boxes and
what they will be able to do.
Next year, the feature most commonly added to
the set-top box will be enhanced electronic
programming guides that let users sort through
viewing choices more quickly and with
interactivity. Viewers will be able to surf to a Web
site with more information about a show or see
snippets of programs embedded in the program
guide. Some will be able to control the programming of a VCR or set-top device with
storage capability through the use of infrared wireless connections--the same technology
used in a remote control.
The more advanced cable set-tops available will offer USB (universal serial bus)
connections to hook up cameras for videoconferencing or downloading pictures, and
possibly even printers, though relatively few people may take advantage of these
capabilities at first.
Many of the devices will be WebTV boxes outfitted for a 56-kbps Internet connection, twice
the speed of most dial-up computer lines today. And a growing number of cable operators
will be rolling out boxes such as Scientific-Atlanta's Explorer 2000 or General Instrument's
DCT-5000, which offer two-way communications capabilities over a coaxial cable, allowing
download speeds at the multimegabit level, many times faster than modems used in
WebTV or most desktop PCs.
"In the last year, I have never seen anything happen so fast in North American cable as I
have seen in my 20 years in the industry," General Instruments chief executive Edward
Breen said at a recent conference in Manhattan. "We shipped 2 million digital set-top units
to go into the home in the last year, and that number is exponentially growing. Most
customers are not even acquired through marketing--it's just word of mouth."
By July 2000, things will get even more interesting as the sale of cable set-top boxes at
retail stores becomes mandatory, as set forth by the Federal Communications
Commission.
Scientific-Atlanta and General Instrument are the largest set-top box makers but provide
most of their wares indirectly to consumers, through cable systems operated by such
companies as Comcast, Time Warner, and Telecommunications Incorporated. Consumer
electronics and PC companies such as Compaq Computer, may start competing against
them in 2000, resulting in a proliferation of potential features, though Scientific-Atlanta and
GI are still likely be the dominant players. Manufacturers are targeting devices priced in the
$300-to-$600 range, depending on features.
By 2001, more cable companies will offer true video-on-demand services, starting shows for
the customer when they are ordered online, not at hours determined earlier by the system.
"Pause" and "rewind" capabilities may be offered as well, with the addition of enough local
storage in the form of a hard drive or enough server capacity at the cable plant. |
